Dourado on Bitcoin

It is true that Bitcoin can substitute for other currencies, but as with the Internet, the abstraction of a permissionless application layer means that it is much more than a substitute: it is like a transport layer for finance.

In short, Bitcoin is not just a substitute for money; it can be a form of generalized, programmable, decentralized contracting.

Bitcoin is a new transport layer for finance that allows decentralized, disruptive, permissionless development of applications on a separate layer. It has the capability to do for finance what the Internet did for communication.

Most of Bitcoin’s critics are making a category error. They are taking aim at Bitcoin the currency, when in fact Bitcoin is much more than a currency, in the same way that the Internet is much more than the telecommunication services that preceded it.